Hunter revisited : the life and art of Leslie Hunter

Smith, Bill, 1936-2012

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Summary

Paintings by the Scottish Colourists - Peploe, Fergusson, Hunter and Cadell - are recognised and collected internationally. Over the last 30 years prices at auction have soared well beyond the wildest dreams of the four artists. However Leslie Hunter has not received the same level of acclamation as the other three. To an extent his vision of art and his painting is still misunderstood and underrated by many collectors. Yet Hunter at the top of his form has few equals in Scottish, if not British painting. It was Peploe himself who said of a work by Hunter: "That is Hunter at his best, and it is as fine as any Matisse". He brought a new vibrancy to still life that is rarely matched today. Hunter was an intelligent, sensitive, driven man, who lived for his art to the exclusion of virtually everything else. He was much more attuned to what was happening in artistic circles in France in the first three decades of the twentieth century than the vast majority of his contemporaries in Britain. Colour was to become his guiding principle. In this major biography, the first for 75 years, the authors chart Hunter's exploration of Cezanne's theories on colour and form and their influence on his own painting, and the inspiration he gained later from the art of Matisse, whose work had profoundly shocked him some 15 years earlier. New light is shed on his early career in San Francisco and his initial work as an illustrator of magazines and books. Much of the research is based on letters written by Hunter to his friends. The text is supported by over 150 illustrations, almost two-thirds of which are of works in private collections.